PORTLAND, Maine — David Welch grew up in Portland and got his college degree at Indiana University.
Now he lives in Atlanta.
Welch flew from Atlanta to Portland for Thursday night’s women’s basketball game between 17th-ranked Indiana and the University of Maine, which featured former Gorham High star and Indiana first team All-American Mackenzie Holmes.
Indiana rallied from an eight-point halftime deficit to beat UMaine 67-59. Holmes had 22 points and seven rebounds.
“It was UMaine’s idea to have this game. I was floored by that,” Welch said. “Basketball is huge in Maine but they live, eat and sleep basketball in Indiana.”
Welch was one of 5,983 fans in the sold-out crowd at the Cross Insurance Arena Thursday night, to which people traveled from both near and far to watch the UMaine Black Bears face off against one of the state’s best high school basketball players of all time.
Windham’s Kelly Dubay played basketball for Holmes’ mother, Denise, who coached the Windham High School girls team.
“And I used to babysit for Mackenzie and her brother, Cameron,” said Dubay, who added that it was crazy to have Holmes here and to have such a large crowd on hand to witness it.
Casey Dubay, also from Windham and Kelly’s sister-in-law, brought her kids because she wanted her daughter to see a women’s college basketball game. She wanted to support Holmes and have her kids watch the hometown girl from Windham, UMaine sophomore guard Sarah Talon.
Saco’s Paul O’Leary said he has followed Holmes’ career and watches her games on TV.
He got interested in girls basketball through his friendship with Scarborough High School girls basketball coach Mike Giordano and said it was a treat to see Holmes play live in Portland.
“I want to see Mackenzie score 40 points and UMaine win by two,” O’Leary said before the game.
T Doiron of Sanford felt the same as his friend, O’Leary, and said this was a special event.
“This is big for the state of Maine,” Doiron said. “[UMaine head coach] Amy Vachon has done a super job. She has a legitimate program.”
It was clear from the announcement of the starting lineups that Holmes was the fan favorite.
When she was introduced, the volume of the cheers was eye-opening. There was no shortage of Holmes or Indiana jerseys in the crowd.
Talon also earned a rousing cheer from the sellout crowd.
As the game progressed, Holmes continued to get loud cheers every time she scored but the crowd began getting behind the underdog Black Bears, who led by eight at the half, and their star graduate student guard Anne Simon.
Luxembourg native Simon poured in 25 first-half points and finished with a game-high and career-high 34 points. She also had 11 rebounds and five steals.
The Hoosiers needed a 15-5 run to close out the game to secure their fifth straight victory.
“We knew there were going to be a lot of people because Mackenzie was coming to play Maine. She was going to have a lot of fans here,” Simon said. “I don’t think many people believed we had a chance to win. But, as a team, we always believe in each other.”
Vachon called it a “great basketball game” and thanked Indiana for agreeing to come to Maine.
“It meant a ton to Mackenzie and to the state of Maine. Not a lot of programs would have done that. It’s hard to get teams to come up here to play us,” Vachon said. “Kudos to them. All my admiration for Mackenzie. That kid is a tremendous basketball player and it was fun to see her up close and play against her.”
Vachon was proud of her team’s grit and told her players before the game that there were “thousands of young girls who had never seen a Division I basketball game live before” in the stands who would leave the game with new role models.
Holmes said having girls in the crowd look up to her as a role model “means everything to me. I was once that little girl looking up to the players ahead of me.”
She was pleased that those girls got a chance to see what Division I college basketball looks like and hopes it serves as a platform for their development and aspirations to play college basketball.
“Maine and Indiana did a great job drawing people to this game and making it look like a high-level game, which it was,” Holmes said.
“It was a really high intensity game and a really competitive game and that’s going to be good for us going down the road,” said Holmes, a two-time state AA champ and former Maine Gatorade Player of the Year.
Indiana senior guard Sydney Parrish said she and her teammates wanted to win the game for Mackenzie and called the atmosphere in the arena “amazing.”
“I don’t think anyone on the team (except Holmes) had ever been to Maine. We didn’t know what to expect,” said Parrish, a 2020 Indiana Miss Basketball and Oregon transfer. “ It was a really cool experience for us to see her hometown and where she grew up playing.”
